


The Deconstruction of Stars

by thehobbem



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Alternating, Tumblr Prompt, everyone thinks they know who victor is, hiroko's maiden name is nakamura bc I needed one for her, when he barely knows himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14407356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobbem/pseuds/thehobbem
Summary: 5 times Victor turned the legends about him on their heads + 1 time he was exactly as expected





	The Deconstruction of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regardinglove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regardinglove/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Rae! ♥

1.

Minako had been a fan of figure skating for almost as long as she’d been a dancer.

And when you loved figure skating, there was no escaping Victor Nikiforov. There never had been — not since his junior days, when a young Victor with mermaid-like hair, effortless grace and a penchant for drama, had single-handedly brought Russia back from the dead and changed the sport forever. When he broke the Junior World record in Bulgaria, Minako knew that was just the beginning.

(Little did she know — how could she have known that one little boy had just had a revelation in front of an old TV set, in a back room of the Ice Castle?)

And just like that, Victor Nikiforov became part of her life, almost as much as Yuuri himself. The day he skated onto the ice with short hair, she choked on her sake and sent a message.

_ >>>DID YOU SEE HIS HAIR? _

It didn’t matter which country Yuuri was in, she knew he’d be watching. The reply came instantly:

<<< _WHAT IS HAPPENING_

_ <<< WHY IS THIS HAPPENING _

<<< _he looks so hot_

She’d watched Victor for years, and knew everything there was to know about him. Her overall Victor Nikiforov knowledge could only be rivaled by Yuuri’s (the student would always surpass the master).

But it didn’t take a dedicated fan to know that Victor was a playboy. That was simply common knowledge. Everyone and their cousin had read or heard about his numerous affairs with the hottest people alive (a couple of international top models, a French fashion designer, a prince of a small European country, Christophe Giacometti, the actress People Magazine had elected World’s Most Beautiful Woman).

Victor Nikiforov broke hearts with the same ease he broke world records.

Which was exactly why he had to leave _now_. She loved to watch him, yes. From a distance. Not here, with his robe hanging open, pretending to be asleep and baring his shoulder to Yuuri. Not here, making Yuuri clutch his chest and blush at the mere sight of him.

Victor Nikiforov broke hearts with the same ease he broke world records, but Minako would be damned if she let him break Katsuki Yuuri’s. He could go be free with his charms someplace else.

Except that here he was now, turning into a blushing mess watching Yuuri skate to _Eros_. Stuttering when Yuuri, _her_ Yuuri, smiled at him; revolving around him like his personal moon. The night she and Yuuri had left the dance studio hours and hours after dinner, they’d found Victor sitting outside by the door. Waiting. And if his face hadn’t lit up brighter than the sea on a lantern festival night when he saw Yuuri, then her name was not Okukawa Minako.

She watched him like a hawk, day in, day out. But all she saw was Victor stumbling (Victor Nikiforov, who hadn’t fallen in years), fumbling with his words (Victor, always so well spoken in interviews) and smiling with his eyes (real smiles, too. Minako understood stage smiles too well). She saw him blushing like a high-school kid trying to pluck up the courage to give someone chocolate on Valentine’s Day.

(Like someone who had never dated anyone in their life.)

When he ran into a glass door, it finally clicked. A hazy memory that had been nagging at her for weeks: he reminded her of Toshiya.

Or rather, he reminded her of the quiet Katsuki-kun from 2-B, who had been in the advanced classes and in the student council, but never seemed to be able to put two coherent words together when he talked to Hiroko-chan. Who had made a point of bringing katsu sando to Hiroko because he knew it was her favorite, and had run into a door more than once because he’d been too distracted looking at her.

Katsuki-kun, who one day had walked up to Minako and Hiroko after class, nervously adjusting his glasses and asking Okukawa-senpai if he could talk to Hirok- err, Nakamura-san alone for a few moments. Who looked at Hiroko just the way Minako thought her friend should be looked at: like she’d hung the moon in the sky.

Toshiya, who had never stopped looking at Hiroko that way (and Minako sometimes wondered if Hiroko realized the effect she had on her husband.)

(And Yuuri was so much like his mother.)

When would she have ever thought that Victor Nikiforov, Five Time World Champion of figure skating, Hottest Bachelor Alive, would be just like sixteen-year-old Katsuki Toshiya? Helpless against a pair of brown eyes?

Victor Nikiforov broke hearts with the same ease he broke (his own) world records.

...Did he, though?

 

2.

Mari knew much more about Victor Nikiforov than she’d ever wanted to know.

She liked figure skating and frequently watched competitions with Minako (and a few bottles of sake), but didn’t know a lot about the technicalities of the sport; she could only root for the skaters to land their jumps, hell if she knew the names of the jumps being landed or missed. She didn’t bother memorizing names of skaters other than her few personal favorites, but it was impossible to be Yuuri’s sister and not know about Victor Nikiforov.

For years, his face had been all she saw when she walked into Yuuri’s bedroom; he’d spend almost his entire allowance on specialized figure skating magazines that came with pictures, interviews or articles about Nikiforov. Victor was the sole reason why Yuuri had put so much effort into skating, why he’d spent hours and hours at the Ice Castle, saved money so desperately and studied English so hard.

And whenever Yuuri had wanted to ramble about Victor, Mari had listened, allowing her little brother to follow her around as she served guests. She’d listen to him read bits and pieces of his interviews while she cleaned the bedrooms, and see every new poster he got before helping him hang them on his wall.

She may not have had all the details, but she knew enough. She knew Victor had broken a thousand records by now — other people’s at first, and then his own. Knew he was the face of the sport, and that he was sponsored by some of the biggest brands around the world. She’d seen all of his photoshoots for famous labels and heard Minako talk about all the gorgeous people he’d dated, never imagining someday he’d be more than frozen images on a wall.

So, when Victor Nikiforov showed up at Yu-topia one April afternoon, bringing boxes, expensive bags and a giant version of Vicchan, the first thing that crossed Mari’s mind was what a troublesome, spoiled guest he would be.

Famous, loaded, beautiful and ethereal Victor Nikiforov was most likely used to getting the whole world on a platter as silver as his hair, without having to lift a single finger. He only had to ask, and people just bowed to his will or something. And Yu-topia… couldn’t do that. They didn’t have the people for it, nor the luxuries he probably got at five-star hotels on a regular basis. They didn’t even have a place to better accommodate Makkachin: all they had was Vicchan’s old bed that no one had had the heart to throw away yet. But Makkachin was too big for it. Just like Victor was too big for Hasetsu.

That first night, she barely slept. _Victor Nikiforov_ was here to coach her little brother, but how could they make him stay? What could they do to make sure he didn’t get bored and leave?

It was only after a week that she noticed Makkachin sleeping in Vicchan’s bed; she might have thought he was too big for it, but the dog seemed to have a different opinion on the matter. He snored peacefully on the tiny cushion, while Victor, sprawled on the floor, watched a drama on TV. He didn’t speak a lick of Japanese, but seemed completely engrossed by the show nonetheless, his eyes wide and bright in the flickering light.

The next day, at the fish market, Yamaguchi-san from the store asked her to congratulate Yuuri-kun on “the young man he brought from America” (Mari didn’t bother correcting her). Apparently, that “lovely” young man had spent almost an hour talking to Yamaguchi-san that very same morning. But how?

A few days later, she found Victor happily chatting with the fishermen (how?!) by the seashore. Entranced, she watched one of them lend his rod to Victor and patiently, full of gestures, teach him how to fish.

Victor seemed just as interested in his instructions as he’d been in the drama that other night. Come to think of it, he did spend a lot of his free time talking to her mother, too — they used the few words in English she knew, the little Japanese he was quickly picking up, gestures and an absurd number of smiles and nods.

Perhaps she should’ve seen it coming. It was just that it was hard to let go of certain ideas, and Victor was too unpredictable. Which meant that, when Mari woke up the morning after Onsen on Ice, she was not prepared to find Victor in their kitchen. She watched him dexterously prepare breakfast and lunch for himself and Yuuri. Easily, comfortably, like he belonged in the Yu-topia kitchen.

Maybe Hasetsu was just the right size for Victor Nikiforov, after all.

 

3.

 _Never meet your heroes_.

Takeshi had always firmly believed in that. He’d never idolized anyone, but he’d been watching Yuuko and Yuuri worship Victor Nikiforov for a decade. The day he’d heard Yuuko tell Yuuri “I want to see you skate against Victor one day”, he’d instinctively felt it was a bad idea: meeting Nikiforov would most likely only break their hearts.

Sure, he was always nice to his fans, but the real Victor Nikiforov was bound to be a condescending prick. No one could be that famous, that handsome and that rich without letting that go at least a little bit over to their heads.

 _Don’t put him on a pedestal,_ he thought.

It wasn’t like Takeshi didn’t like to watch Victor Nikiforov skate, he did. He’d mastered the ice like no one before him, who could be a fan of the sport and not watch him in awe? But one thing was to watch him from continents away and praise his artistry, admire the ease with which he landed quads; meeting him and expecting him to be as tangible as everyone else was something else entirely, and nothing short of a recipe for disappointment.

Still, it hadn’t mattered when they were young; everyone was allowed to have heroes. But as Yuuri slowly and certainly went up the ranks, Takeshi knew he was in for some heartbreak when that meeting eventually happened.  Heartbreak which he could see now, right in front of him, as Victor skated in Yuuri’s home rink, cheerfully called him “piglet” and forbade him from going on the ice.

And Yuuri, amazingly, obeyed. For the first time in years, their stubborn Katsuki “I-skate-figure-eights-instead-of-sleeping” Yuuri stayed on the sidelines, with skates put away and longing eyes that Takeshi couldn’t tell were aimed at Victor or the ice itself.

(They’d always been one and the same for Yuuri.)

Yuuri stayed off the ice, didn’t complain about being called a pig, and threw himself into his new exercise regimen. Had Takeshi been asked, he would’ve told Yuuri to send Nikiforov and his condescension back to Russia. What did Living Legends know about real people’s struggles?

But he wasn’t asked, and had to be content to watch. Morning after morning, before the sun had even had the decency to fully rise, Yuuri could be seen running after Nikiforov on his bike along the shore. Nothing particularly new in that scene ‒nothing Yuuri hadn’t spent his entire life doing. He could do that on sheer instinct at this point, no matter how much his lungs burned with the effort. It was just that watching it come to life so literally was a bit heartbreaking.

But the snow Nikiforov had brought in the middle of April melted just like any other regular snow, and Nikiforov himself seemed to follow suit.

And to be fair, he did find Yuuri pretty fast that night, didn’t he? Takeshi could’ve sworn Victor wouldn’t pay attention anymore after the other, smaller Russian prodigy arrived. But he did. It hadn’t even been an hour before Victor showed up at the rink looking for Yuuri. And as he watched him anxiously skate those figure eights, he didn’t look at all like some poised, cold perfection at the top of a podium, nor like the callous coach who called Yuuri names with a savage smile on his face. No — he looked like someone who was actually watching. Seeing Yuuri, trying to puzzle him out.

( _Caring, even,_ was a thought that didn’t quite dare to materialize itself as more than a vague, whispered hope.)

Like someone who was made of more than ice and gold medals.

The sight that greeted Takeshi one afternoon in the Ice Castle, one week after Onsen on Ice, was made of mere flesh and bones, as real and simple as anyone else. Axel braided Victor’s hair, her brow furrowed in concentration, while Lutz patiently taught him some basic Japanese — mercilessly laughing at him for getting most of it wrong (and his accent _was_ pretty bad. Flawed, one could say, hard as it might be to apply such a concept to a Legend). Loop filmed the whole thing on Yuuko’s phone, catching every single one of his mistakes and linguistic imperfections on camera for posterity. But Victor simply looked incredibly happy about it all.

It had never occurred to him that Victor might not like pedestals either.

 

4.

“The Victor Nikiforov Effect”, was what Toshiya used to call it.

Wide, sparkly eyes behind blue-rimmed glasses, mouth hanging open and ears deaf to anything that wasn’t the music accompanying the sound of blades scraping the ice. Victor Nikiforov had always had that effect on Yuuri.

Which was more than fine — what little kid didn’t have someone to look up to? It was good, it had set a goal for Yuuri, done wonders for his grades and his dedication to the sport. Harmless hero worship did nothing to anyone, except maybe the integrity of the walls in Yuuri’s bedroom (adhesive tape could be a pain to take off a wall).

That was the full extent to which Toshiya had expected to be involved: having to repaint Yuuri’s walls to cover the trail of adhesive tapes left behind, when those posters of Victor Nikiforov came down one day — not dealing with Victor Nikiforov himself.

(Or “the really good-looking foreigner”, as he would invariably call Victor in front of Yuuri, just to see him let out an annoyed huff: “It’s _Victor Nikiforov_ , dad!”. As if it were possible to live with Yuuri and not know that.)

So now here he was, the man himself, and the Victor Nikiforov Effect was going at full steam. Toshiya had never seen his son more at a loss, or more disconcerted, than today. Or the ten days that followed Victor’s arrival.

The little Russian coming to Hasetsu had certainly helped the matter, though: it had sparked something in Yuuri, snapped him out of his adoration and into action. After that, things seemed to settle a bit; to the untrained eye, Yuuri was himself again, but that was far from the truth. He was unmistakably a different person now. It might not be obvious to people from the outside, but that didn’t make it any less true.

The Victor Nikiforov Effect was still there — not burning bright like a forest fire, but constant and hushed, like flames in a fireplace. You just had to know to look for the clues, for the breadcrumbs of devotion Yuuri left in the wake of Victor. The problem was, you couldn’t trust _Victor_ to be able to understand, or even see the clues. He was a celebrity who had spent the better part of his life having people tripping over themselves to please him. To flatter him. How easy would it be for Victor to mistake Yuuri’s silences for indifference and just… pack up and leave?

All Toshiya could hope for, as routine fell upon them once again, was that Victor understood. That he heard the silences for what they really were, and listened to Yuuri’s steps coming right behind him wherever he went. And as the days went by and Victor stayed and stayed, Toshiya thought that maybe he did understand.

Such concerns came to a screeching halt, however, on one summer afternoon. It wasn’t rare for people in Yu-topia — hosts and guests alike — to see Victor and Yuuri coming home in the evening with the victories or woes of the day written on their faces. In that way, those two were remarkably similar. And so, when they got home after a particularly gruesome day of training, with exhaustion oozing out of every pore in their bodies, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

What _was_ a surprise was to see Yuuri sprawled on the floor with his legs comfortably resting on Victor’s lap, eyes closed in bliss as Victor gave him a foot massage. Toshiya had to let that sink in for a moment before he carried on with his task (those towels weren’t gonna deliver themselves to their guests).

As he headed towards the locker room of the onsen, he tried to remember what that scene had made him think of; what sudden certainty had just fleeted through his mind, escaping him just as he tried to pin it down.

It was only at night, while watching his wife get ready for bed, that it hit him: Yuuri was just like Hiroko. A Katsuki he might be, but those doe-like eyes that lured people in? That naive unawareness of how devastating they were? That was Hiroko through and through. Or, as he’d called it in the back of his mind in high-school: the Nakamura Hiroko Effect. And judging by Victor’s expression that afternoon, he’d been fully hit. Toshiya could well relate.

It was very possible that _Yuuri_ didn’t realize the effect he had on _Victor_.

 

5.

Victor Nikiforov was a genius.

That was one of the few certainties Yuuri had always had for more than a decade — ever since he’d watched a 16-year-old Victor break a world record and make it look effortless. Between the ages of 12 and 23, a lot of things had changed for Yuuri: the knowledge of himself as a person and as a skater was one; his faith in the immortality of dogs was another. But his faith in Victor Nikiforov had remained untouched, like a priceless piece of art behind thick sheets of glass in a world renowned museum.

As a child, it’d been hard to find proof that would confirm what he could feel in his bones — that is, that Victor Nikiforov was unrivaled in everything. So he’d used whatever (few) resources he had at hand: spent his allowance on national and imported magazines about figure skating, in the hopes of finding an interview, a column, or even a comment, about Victor. Had patiently waited every night until his family was asleep, so that he could use the internet without disrupting the business, and no one would use the phone while he slowly scoured websites in Russian with a dictionary. (An origin story he never had the courage to point to when asked about his night owl habits.)

Every shred of evidence he got a hold of just further proved the theory that, for him, was already a fact: Victor Nikiforov was suave, intelligent, well-read and well-traveled. On the ice, he moved like music itself, creating beautiful stories and weaving them into the most unforgettable, technically difficult programs. By the time Victor’s winning streak began, and he started landing quads as easily as most people breathed, Yuuri’s confidence in his idol had long been established.

Victor Nikiforov was an unrivaled genius.

Or at least, had been until Yuuri met him. Some truths are easier to believe when you don’t look at them from up close, and Victor just might be one of them.

On Victor’s first night at Yu-topia, Yuuri watched him eat katsudon with the weirdest, most disillusioned fascination. Instead of delicately nibbling at his food like a god descended among mortals, Victor wolfed down the pork cutlet bowl like a Dickensian orphan who hadn’t seen food in weeks. Yuuri couldn’t even dedicate all of his attention to what was being said ‒he was too spellbound by the rice left on the corner of Victor’s mouth. Just like Phichit when he ate too fast. (At least Victor had the grace of not wiping his mouth with his sleeves, something Phichit had yet to learn).

“Well, what’s ‘agape’ to you then, Victor?!”  
“It’s a feeling, of course, so I could never explain it in words!”

From the bench, Yuuri tried to contain a snort. Did Victor even know what he wanted from Yurio’s performance?

“Yuuri! Try to imagine entangling more of the egg!”

(To be fair, Victor was trying to go with his stupid idea of what ‘eros’ was supposed to mean. That one was solely on him.)

Victor was also a messy drunk. Seeing him show up at the Ice Castle disheveled and hungover was a slap on the face of years of adoration. It was hard to hold Victor to those sacred heights Yuuri had put him on when he was right there, within reach. And painfully human.

Maybe Victor Nikiforov wasn’t perfect at all.

That suspicion was staunchly avoided for as long as possible, and Yuuri spent months juggling hopes of perfection with warmth and mistakes that directly contradicted that ideal.

The breaking point came in a car park in China (much later than it should have, if Yuuri really thought about it), and the tears that came with it cemented the inevitable truth: Victor was far from perfect. Victor, just like Yuuri himself, didn’t always know what he was doing.

And as Victor’s body crashed against his and they both landed on the ice — with Victor’s hand shielding his head from impact — Yuuri knew that was okay. Victor Nikiforov was not, in fact, a genius.

But he was more unrivaled in Yuuri’s eyes than ever.

 

1+

Hiroko honestly didn’t understand people sometimes.

Minako-senpai rambled about Victor being “too free with his charms” (a rant that always started when the first bottle of sake ended. Amazing how that happened); whenever the name “Victor” was mentioned, Mari grumbled and looked stressed out, in the silent way that was so typical of her. Pretending to be indifferent, when she actually fooled no one.

Takeshi-kun kept his distance from him as much as possible, and even Toshiya seemed wary of Victor, watching him with worried eyes when he thought no one was looking. Yuuko and the triplets were over the moon, of course, but that was to be expected. They watched his every move with stars in their eyes, and Yuuri was no different. Except that, unlike Yuuko, he didn’t know what to do or say about it more than half the time.

(He didn’t know what to feel about it. But that, too, was to be expected.)

As for Hiroko, she was baffled. Not at Victor — nothing baffling about _him —_ but at everyone else acting as if Victor were made of sharp angles that would cut at the lightest touch, when he was so obviously made of soft corners. Rough around the edges, for sure, but anything gets rusty when not used.

Everyone treated him like something to be worshipped or feared, but Vicchan was just a _boy_. The sweetest one alive, too. Sweet and clumsy, and obviously full of love to give and no one to give it to. Lonely.

And so clearly in love with Yuuri that Hiroko was starting to doubt everyone else’s common sense. She couldn’t possibly be the only one to see it, could she? (Maybe that was the problem with Mari. The poor eyesight that ran on both sides of the family had finally caught up to her. That was the only reasonable explanation as to why she wasn’t seeing something right under her nose.)

It was too easy to be misled by the beautiful posters and overblown gossip, really.  By the expensive clothes (the names of which she couldn’t even pronounce sometimes) and all the silver and the gold that people were used to associating with him.

But at the very least, people in Hasetsu knew better. Yamaguchi-san from the store wouldn’t stop gushing about “the lovely young man Yuuri-kun had brought from America” (Hiroko didn’t bother correcting her). Apparently, Vicchan had spent almost an hour talking to her in his broken Japanese; she even showed Hiroko some doodles he’d made on a newspaper, to help their communication (and wouldn’t you know it, there was a poodle doodled on the top right corner of the paper. Of course).

It wasn’t just Yamaguchi-san, either: most of Hasetsu now knew Vicchan. He could be often seen taking a detour in his morning jog to go talk to someone in a shop, or a fisherman, or a child he’d met at the Ice Castle the day before. The guests at Yu-topia loved him, and the question Hiroko heard the most these days was “isn’t Vicchan gonna drink with us tonight?” (The answer to that always depended on Yuuri rather than Victor. If he were in a talkative mood, or needed a foot massage, you wouldn’t be able to pry Victor from his side. But if Yuuri wanted to be left alone, then Vicchan would invariably be found drinking in the common area.)

(She should talk to him about this, by the way. Who had let him go through life drinking his pain away? She could only deal with one Minako at a time.)

Time, as usual, did its share of making sure that both the distrust and the reverence slowly settled into calm(er) acceptance or affection. The awe in Yuuri’s eyes might never fully fade, but then again, the wonder in Victor’s was going nowhere either. It was right there, clear as day.

And yet, a few months later, everyone piled around the television at Yu-topia gasped in shock as they watched Victor kiss Yuuri in front of the cameras — everyone but her.

After all, it was to be expected.

**Author's Note:**

> As the wonderful [regardinglove](http://extranikiforov.tumblr.com/)'s birthday was yesterday, I couldn't _not_ give her anything, so here it is! I hope this will make your Monday a bit better!  <3
> 
> Thanks to our fabulous wife [maydei](http://maydei.tumblr.com) for the beta! ^^


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